Real Wedding

Palm Springs Estate Wedding: Kevin & Joshua

October 17, 2015

Kevin and Joshua met in 2011 through a mutual friend. They shared a love of cycling, and have since completed several charity rides together. Joshua swept Kevin off of his feet with his impressive dance moves. By the end of the night they had plans for the following weekend, and the rest is history!

In 2014, two of their good friends were getting married in Cartagena, Colombia. It was Kevin’s birthday weekend. One night before the wedding, during dinner on top of the wall surrounding the Old Town, Kevin and Joshua were surrounded by friends. The band called Joshua up on stage and he dropped to one knee and proposed. It was the perfect setting and a perfect tribute to the couple’s shared love of travel.

Kevin located the couple’s wedding venue through a search on AirbnB. Looking for big houses in Palm Springs that were available to rent, he found Bougainvillea Estate and booked it based solely on the photographs online. The wedding became a destination affair with family and friends.

Planning a Palm Springs wedding from Chicago required quite a bit of internet planning. Kevin and Joshua searched online resources to try to find their vendors. They were connected with the perfect providers, including photographer Derek Chad, with whom they share the experience of having children through surrogacy. In fact, Kevin and Joshua are expecting a baby boy!

Kevin made the guestbook from birch wood slices that were dropped into a frame. He also made the gorgeous wire art seating chart, which their florist, Peter, dressed up beautifully despite the act that the grooms didn’t mention it to him until the 11th hour.

Music was very important to the couple. They walked in to the ceremony to an instrumental version of “Rather Be” by Clean Bandit and out to the vocal version. Josh’s mother son dance was Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me,” and Kevin’s mother son dance was to Paul Stoke’s Wedding Song, which his late father played at his wedding to Kevin’s mother.

Kevin shared the couples very personal favorite memories from their wedding: The greatest memory from our wedding weekend was that the Friday before our wedding was the day we found out that they could hear the heartbeat of our child in our surrogate, which of course added a whole extra level of emotion to the weekend that only our close circle of friends and close family members were aware of (it was still early in the process to go public). So we did have a shotgun wedding in a way. From the actual wedding day, aside from the obvious, at the end of the night after the whole wedding and reception everyone changed into the swimming suits and got into the pool and hot tub, and the celebration kept going until after 2am (and luckily with the noise ordinances in the valley, the cops never came either!). And just the fact that we were able to get married at all, and both of our parents were there and families, and grandmothers, celebrating the wedding and our love no differently because we are two men.

Kevin and Joshua suggest that couples planning their own weddings choose great service providers then trust them to take care of everything you need. Relax and enjoy your day!